jam

They were all over us for the last half hour, I'm not sure if lucky is accurate.

Quote of the day.

In fairness he's been saying all season that this is where we should be aiming. Not sure if I agree that we're the best in the League; Leeds and Norwich seem pretty tasty.

I think most business types are familier with the concept of speculate to accumulate. I'm not sure if it can be said that it was a case of them never having the imagination to consider that scenario* or simply that they never had the financial muscle to act on it. Plus there was only so far that we could go without significant further investment (top-flight, full stadium, etc). *You could well be right though and frankly following last season I wouldn't be surprised if Lowe had designs on us being a topflight team of academy developed professionals. The circumstances are so different now; we're debt free and able to outspend and 'out-prestige' most of our division rivals and have a, owner who could provide additional funds if he so choses. Plus there is now so much more scope for return on investment - we have two whole divisions above us. Right now it feels like fantasy football time. We are a big fish in this league and a pretty healthy one at that. I guess it gets interesting if and when we get promoted back to the prem.

Wotton.

A bit ironic when sung by the fans of the club formerly known as Wimbledon, no?

Don't punish yourself, man. Get some coffee from starbucks or somewhere and carry it in. The stuff they sell at the ground is worse than vile.

From the OS.

And Harding, Trotman and Jaidi in defence.

If that ****es you off you really need to get out more...

Perform Check out their client list and admire the dreary sameness...

Jack Straw, Baroness (Sayeeda) Warsi, Chris Huhne, Bonnie Greer (US-born playright). http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/question_time/8315226.stm

I think we should play that in a 4-2-4. I get fed up with hearing all the old timers talking about how good it was under Lawrie and Nichol.

If Pardew did go (which I don't expect), it would make his comments about players staying here and winning things look a trifle silly.

And now we're off the bottom, the players and fans can see tangible progress. If we keep this run going and results go our way we will be out of the relegation zone very, very soon.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it to do with the rights that the BBC have purchased to show highlights? Similar to why Solent goes offline when they are broadcasting evening games. I was under the impression that they only have limited rights to put stuff on the internet so assume that if they made the footy highlights available outside the UK they'd be breaking the terms of their license with the Football League. Not that this helps Alpine or anyone outside the UK who just wants to see the highlights...

MK Dons.

What they all said...

Is it a reminder of the condition he was in when he signed up?

Quite right. And we were terrible against Torquay.

Good post, Phil. I was under the impression that Lowe and Wilde (from rumours on here) were always unhappy about the appointment of Pearson so the writing was always on the wall when it became clear that they were putting themselves back in control. I've always felt that Pearson's achievments here were overrated. He did keep us up but only just and he did have a strong squad on paper to work with and theres no way that people can realistically believe that if Pearson had been kept on we would have had a significantly differently squad to that which we ended up with last season. Posts like Fitzhugh Fella's above give more reason for credit to Pearson as they point to him having more to deal with than is easily seen from the outside. Which makes me feel that maybe he actually was the right man for that time. And as Phil asks, would Pearson would have had the experience to rebuild a club from scratch, which it appears that Pardew has had to do? I'm not a Pardew fan but it seems like he has been successful in rebuilding the basics. Maybe again, we have the right man for the situation?

Yep, realistically we should feel confident to beat Charlton. They couldn't beat us at their place and we've strengthened since then. If the players don't think that they can beat any team in this competition then something is wrong. Although it is noticeable that we can be unsettled by teams getting in amongst us. I hope Pardew is trying to address that.

Here's the competition page on the FL site: http://www.football-league.co.uk/page/JohnstonesPaintTrophy/0,,10794,00.html The panel on the right shows the structure; regional final is two legs then a day out to Wembley.

It is an interesting thought. I was never in favour of admin, such a big risk and I don't like the idea of local businesses losing money because of it. I wasn't keen on Lowe but at the time didn't see him as much worse than any of the other options. I didn't like the way some fans seemed more anti-lowe than pro-saints. And I'd rather be in the Fizzy Pop than League One, that's for sure. But right now I feel that we have really got lucky with Liebherr and Cortese and personally I feel better about the club than I have in a long time. I'm not sure about Pardew as I've never rated him but I'm hoping he will prove me wrong*. So for me, selfishly, I think I'd take Liebherr each time! *Although if he keeps playing Wotton I might revise my opinion

I'd have been glad to have him as manager here after Strachan or any time since and think he'd have been a better England manager than Keegan or McClaren (no ****). If memory serves things went wrong at Blackburn as he had to deal with Flowers leaving along with Colin Hendry, Chris Sutton and Tim Sherwood all deciding that they wanted to move on. That's the spine of the team gone. From what I read at the time he had a real player power problem. Some people will read that as evidence that Hodgson lost the dressing room but they all left anyway. I think Sherwood was particularly keen to go to Spuds and Hendry wanted to go back to Scotland.